Electronic conferencing capabilities exist for desktop computers and telephone equipment, whereby several conference participants exchange audio and/or video information with one another. Unlike traditional point-to-point communications between two ends of a communication link (as with, e.g., ordinary telephone calls), conferencing usually involves three or more parties. For example, in the video conferencing context, a given party generally desires to see and hear two or more other parties to the conference (“conference participants” or “conferees”), preferably at the same time.
Vendors currently sell systems and services that provide such electronic conferencing capabilities. In order to accommodate the multiple conferees simultaneously taking part in a conference, these systems need to handle greater processing and bandwidth loads than ordinary communications systems. As a result, these systems and services can be relatively expensive to buy or lease, and they also demand high-capacity network capabilities. Additionally, these systems are generally larger than their non-conferencing counterparts, and are thus not readily portable or mobile.
Recently, wireless service providers and wireless telephone makers have begun to offer “camera phones” and “video phones,” generally as consumer novelty items. Camera phones are provided with a camera lens, digital camera hardware, and software that enable them to take photographs. Once taken, these photographs may be, for example, transmitted directly to other wireless users, or sent as email attachments.
With video phones, for example, a video clip consisting of a collection of still images, or frames of video, is captured and generally compressed into an electronic file. Like photographs, a video clip may be transmitted directly to other wireless users as a video stream, or sent as email attachments, for example. Video streams received by wireless devices are generally processed and displayed using media player programs built into the receiving wireless devices.
Traditionally, video streams have been sent and received by wireless devices in a batch mode, rather than in real-time, in order to reduce the consumption of computing and bandwidth resources. More recently, multimedia wireless devices have been offered that are able to receive and display a video stream (and play audio) in substantially real-time.
Currently available wireless devices (e.g., video phones), however, are not able to receive and process more than one audio stream at any given time or more than one video stream at any given time. Therefore, these devices are generally not adapted to provide video conferencing functionality, whereby, for example, a user can enjoy hearing and/or seeing more than one other participant in a conference at the same time.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide methods and systems for combining a plurality of data streams (e.g., two or more audio signals and/or two or more video signals) into a single voice stream and/or a single video stream for sending to a wireless user.